Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I would like to remind Senator Byrne that the reason we have a creaking social welfare system in this country - it is like the layers of an onion - is because Fianna Fáil, in government for the guts of 15 years, made an absolute mess of it. I welcome the Minister to the House.

I would like to address the issue of rent supplement. I want to give a sharp warning to Government against imposing any further cuts to rent supplement payments in the forthcoming budget. The cuts to the rent supplement imposed last year have left vulnerable people in grave situations. I do not exaggerate here, but a cohort of people has been completely pushed out of the housing market and is now homeless as a direct consequence of the rent supplement cuts last year. Others have been left at high risk of becoming homeless and unless they are protected in the forthcoming budget I foresee a significant increase in the problem of homelessness.

We have a rental market in which there continues to be strong demand. Last year in this House, the Minister for Social Protection expressed her concern about the impact of rent supplement on rents and argued that rent supplements were keeping rents artificially high. However, the fact is that in urban areas in particular, rents are rising. We have a situation where people who have been locked out of access to mortgages and are not in a position to house themselves privately are looking to the private rental sector for accommodation. On top of that, because of the cuts to rent supplement, we have a growing number of people on rent supplement who are unable to find anything approaching good quality accommodation in the rental market. In my own area of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, the rent supplement limits are simply unrealistic compared to market rates. The market rent in my area for bedsit accommodation is ¤674 but the rent supplement limit is ¤475. As a result of this, people are dipping into scarce social welfare payments in order to make top ups to put a roof over their heads. Realism must be brought to bear on this situation.

Threshold, the national housing organisation, has observed the low affordability of rental properties in Cork and a recent survey conducted by that organisation found that less than 10% of landlords with rental accommodation were accepting tenants at the lower rent supplement limits. There has been a culture of cuts and reducing rent supplement limits over the past number of years, not just by this Government, but the previous Administration also. In fact, the last Government introduced severe cuts to the rent supplement budget and as a result, many people are now confined to sub-standard bedsit accommodation.